Well, with no beach for 2,000 miles and our barbecue grill on the fritz, the traditional Memorial Day weekend festivities were off the table for the Nitti family.
Fortunately, in Aspen the start of the holiday weekend also signifies the opening of Independence Pass, a local highway that climbs up and over the Continental Divide at 12,1000 feet.
The Pass -- which is closed throughout the winter and early spring to protect motorists from relentless snowfall and migrating Sasquatch -- offers access to unlimited skiing above timberline once opened.
Joining me today in search of some late-May turns was none other than Lou Dawson: ski-mountaineering pioneer, acclaimed author, and avid Civil War recreationist.*
Lou was the first man to climb and ski from the summit of all 54 of Colorado's 14,000ft peaks, an accomplishment made even more remarkable by the fact that he did so on gear that would be considered negligent by today's standards, and without the benefit of the excruciatingly detailed guide books he would go on to author. To put it in perspective, he finished skiing the peaks -- some with "no fall" slope angles of 60 degrees -- in 1991. Nobody duplicated the feat, despite the tremendous advances in technology and access, until 2007. He's also the man behind Wildsnow.com, a skiing blog frequented by pretty much every avid backcountry user in America. And in case you're wondering, yes, Superman wears Lou Dawson pajamas.
Lou is a household name in the mountain towns of the Rockies, and every ski-mountaineer that's followed owes him a debt of gratitude for the doors he's opened on peaks once perceived as un-skiable. So for a guy like me, it's not hyperbole to say that spending a day on a peak with Lou is akin to playing 18 holes with Tiger, only without the senseless profanities and free Gatorade.
Our goal today was Twining Peak, a 13,700 foot summit accessed from one of the last switchbacks before the top of the Pass. Upon parking, we were greeted by a light snow and relatively sparse coverage for this time of year. Undeterred, we pressed on.
As we worked our way up the valley towards the summit of Twining, the cloud level began to drop, shrouding our goal in a rather discouraging canopy of white.
At 13,000 feet, the clouds lower in the valley burned off, allowing us this view back towards the highway and Aspen.
Roughly 100 vertical feet from the summit, the clouds became so thick that visibility was down to five feet in every direction. While this may not pose an immediate threat if you're driving through the Kansas plains, in a situation like this it's possible you may mistakenly walk off a cliff, which is, in mountaineering parlance, "a bad thing."
That being the case, we decided to stop our ascent, prepare to ski, and hope for a window of visibility in which to descend. As you can see by this next image, that didn't happen. 
No, this isn't a picture of the 2008 Republican National Convention. This particular patch of overwhelming whiteness is the view from nearly 14,000 feet when you find yourself, as Lou aptly put it, "skiing inside an egg." Everything looks the same in every direction, with no idea which way is which.
This is where having Lou, whose guide book included several routes up and down the very peak we were stuck on, comes in awfully handy. I followed him down several hundred vertical feet as he carefully picked his way one turn at a time; taking great care not to inadvertently ski over the cornice lurking somewhere to our left.
After several minutes, we skied out of the clouds and were greeted with some great views of the Pass. Here's Lou, enjoying the down.
Meanwhile, back at the house Lauren spent the morning delivering a healthy 6 pound boy with the aid of nothing but salad tongs and a dustbuster. The new Mom, who had tried fruitlessly to reach me via cellphone when her contractions began, was resting comfortably when I stopped home for a few minutes to get cleaned up before happy hour. I did take a few moments to meet my son, who seems like a pretty cool kid. But man is he needy. **
*Third trait may have been fabricated
**Did not actually happen. No baby yet.
